The Gangster (Isaac Bell 9)

Bare light bulbs sparkled across the street inside the cagework of the Singer Building. Work had ceased for the night, and the steel columns, which had risen several tiers since Bell had been here last, were deserted, the derricks still, the hoisting engines silent. He could hear trolleys, a noisy motor truck, and horseshoes clattering in the street. Movement caught his attention. Five stories above the sidewalk, he saw the silhouette of a man climbing open stairs in the Singer frame—a night watchman or fire watch.

Bell hurried back to the closets, recalling that one had been mostly empty. He inspected it carefully this time and found a door concealed in the back, its knob hidden under a winter coat. The door opened on a stairwell.

“Claypool!”

Silence. No answer, no footsteps. It was possible that Claypool had escaped during the battle, his retreat covered, perhaps, by the wounded detective who had shot Salata.

Bell went back to the windows. The man climbing the Singer steelwork stopped and looked down. Immediately, he lunged toward a ladder and scrambled higher. Bell leaned against the glass to see. Two stories below, another man climbed after him. He was limping, slowed by his “winging” gait.

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Brewster Claypool collapsed into a triangle of cold steel, formed by a column, a crossbeam, and a diagonal wind brace, where he could hide from the monster chasing him. It was hide and pray or simply fall to his death, he was so exhausted. Even a physical culture devotee like J. B. Culp would be hard-pressed to climb as many stairs and ladders as he had—five, before he lost count—and he could not recall the last time he had climbed stairs when an elevator was available.

He had heard the monster’s footsteps when he wedged his trembling legs into the triangle, still climbing down there, somewhere down in the dark. Now he’d l

ost track of him. Muffled by the wind? Or had he stopped? Was he standing stock-still, listening for his prey? For Claypool was prey. He had no doubt of that, prey in a situation that all the pull on earth could not get him out of. He tried to drag air silently into his storming lungs.

Gradually he caught his breath, gradually he began to hope that the killer had given up. Could he somehow just stay inside this little steel crook in the corner of the skyscraper until dawn filled it with workmen? Would he freeze to death? The wind had begun to gust and it was fierce up here. No wonder the engineers riddled the structure with wind braces.

“Mista Claypool.”

The voice was inches from his ear, and he was so shocked and frightened that he shouted, “Who are you? What do you want from me?”

“Who told you to tell Finn to hire an assassin?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then why did you barricade yourself with bodyguards when Finn died?”

In the shrewd, conniving worlds that Brewster Claypool had dominated his entire career, there was no one smarter than a “railroad lawyer”—except a Wall Street lawyer. But when he heard that question in the dark, Brewster Claypool felt every brainstorm he had ever had drain from his head; every parry, every counterstroke, every rejoinder.

“Why?”

Then, all the gods be praised, his brain began to churn.

“Why bodyguards?” he replied smoothly, speaking into the dark wind as if they had settled into club chairs at the Union League. “Because I watched as men were killed, one after another, each at a higher station. Were these the crimes of a madman? Or a man with a brilliant scheme? But when Brandon Finn died, I knew that the ‘why’ of it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the killing would continue, and I had better take precautions—Ahhh!”

A blade bit into his cheek and cut a line to his lip.

Isaac Bell felt warm, sticky liquid dripping on the ladder as he climbed to the seventh tier of the Singer Building cage and smelled the piercing metallic scent of blood. He looked up. Ten feet above his head, he saw the shadows of two men grappling, one tall and broad, the other a wisp of a spider. Claypool didn’t have a chance.

“Branco!” Bell shouted as he jumped for the next ladder.

Branco went rigid with surprise at hearing his name and Claypool squirmed free, slipped through the scaffolds laid across the beams, and fell.

Bell caught his hand as Claypool plunged and tried to swing him onto solid footing.

The lawyer’s hand was slick with blood. It slipped from Bell’s grasp. But Bell had arrested his fall and Claypool landed at his feet, only to slide between boards again and fall to the next floor.

Bell heard Branco scrambling overhead, racing across his tier to find a way down. It was too dark for Bell to see him. Claypool was directly under him at the edge of a pool of light cast by a dim bulb. He went down the ladder to help.

Claypool was sprawled on his back. The man was dying. His face had been slashed repeatedly, and the fall had been brutal, but what would surely kill him was the knife in his chest. His hands moved feebly, pawing at the handle.

Bell restrained them. “Don’t touch it. I’ll get you to the hospital.”

Claypool made a noise in his throat that sounded like laughter. “Only if their doctors have pull with God.” He focused vaguely on Bell’s face. “Thank you for trying to save me.”

“Was it Antonio Branco, the grocer?”